Our fictional pundit predicted more correct primary results than Nate Silver did

[bemildred]

Covering elections isn't just about math.

He went from being a hostage of Russian security forces to predicting the exact results of the Iowa presidential caucuses, right down to the third- and fourth-place finishers. He called Bernie Sanders’s upset win in this past week’s Indiana primary, when his competitors all said Hillary Clinton had it locked down. He has correctly predicted the results of 77 out of 87 races in this year’s primaries, an 89 percent accuracy rating that equals that of FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver while tackling nearly twice as many contests.

And he’s a fictional character.

Carl “The Dig” Diggler is a parody of political pundits written by Felix Biederman and me for CAFE. Carl exists to satirize all that is vacuous, elitist and ridiculous about the media class. From his sycophantic love of candidates in uniform to his hatred of Bernie Bros, from his reverence for “the discourse” to his constant threats of suing the people who troll him on Twitter, Carl is predicated on being myopic, vain and — frankly — wrong.

But something funny happened along the way. Biederman and I, who are neither statisticians nor political scientists, started making educated guesses for our parody about the results of the primaries. And we were right. A lot.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/05/09/our-fictional-pundit-predicted-more-correct-primary-results-than-nate-silver-did/

[JackRiddler]

1. Wow, informed common sense over "math."

[bemildred]

2. I was first trained as a mathematician, and that has much to do with why polls annoy me.

It is a misuse of math to obtain undeserved credibility for their guesses, polls don't mean squat, they are a propaganda tool. This is why they are so popular anywhere bullshit is spread, the internet, news, TV, and of course politics, the ultimate form of entertainment.

[SheilaT]

3. My older son recently told me about Diggler.

Love it.

Nate Silver was absolutely brilliant back in 2008, but not so this year.

[bemildred]

4. Theories are a dime a dozen, easy to think up, easy to find reasons for.

Seeing which one is best is a different matter all together.

[Cryptoad]

5. u must be reading a different Nate than me

He has only missed two primaries, Michigan and Indiana. Thats pretty common seasonable, make ur data fit ur narrative

[bemildred]

6. I infer that the writer thinks four more were "inaccurate"

Based on this statement: "FiveThirtyEight, whose model cannot work without polling, accurately predicted 13."

If you want to attack that, I'd look into how accurate Carl Diggler was.

I'm just glad they didn't name him Dirk Diggler.

[bemildred]

7. The Dirk Diggler Story

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dirk_Diggler_Story

[Cryptoad]

8. Gotta lov the Wiki

been thinking about doing my own page too

[bemildred]

10. So handy. Should be publically funded. nt

[MADem]

13. I think the name was a deliberate reference, perhaps evoking Dirk's less talented brother, or

something?

[bemildred]

14. I think that is plausible. I know I would. The malicious intent seems clear.

[MADem]

12. I think Nate has done pretty well, too.

I think people get mad at him because he doesn't include the concept of feeling "The Bern" in his "polls plus" assessments, or something.

[bemildred]

15. I think he's done better than most, and I give him some credit for trying.

The problem is this is all about people's OPINIONS, which are generally pulled out of their butts for the occasion, there is not a fact to be had that compels anything in the entire process, except that that is what they said when posed that question on that day. And you can't predict anything reliably on that basis. As results show. People like it because it is cheaper than talking to people in depth, which is what you have to do if you really want to understand.

In general, the results of a poll will be about as reliable as the judgement of the pollster, which will vary. You see this problem in scientific results based on statistical methods too. The "replication crisis".

[Dawgs]

9. Of course it did.

NS has been selling garbage for years.

[Vote2016]

11. Nate Silver and the 538 crew have let their personal biases skew their results. If you make a living

making predictions, it must be tempting to pick the favorite and dress it up as a careful calculation.

Spoon has the best expression of the lesson Nate forgot:

You got no time for the messenger
Got no regard for the thing that you don't understand
You got no fear of the underdog
That's why you will not survive
I want to forget how conviction fits
But can I get out from under it?
...
Uh-huh 'cause you don't talk to the water boy
And there's so much you could learn but you don't want to know
You will not back up an inch ever

The 538 crew has had some phony soul searching about lessons learned, but that biggly missed the point.

Nate failed to adequately reassess pollsters and polling methods that were way off contest after contest. Whether he felt too insecure to speak truth about his industry being lost (polling and professional political prognostication around the globe have been bizarrely inaccurate for the past couple of years) or he failed to question dubious data that reinforced his personal political views, Nate blew it.

More importantly, Nate clung desperately to the failed "party decides" model despite the evidence Democrats no longer follow or particularly value the party (establishment support was more a neutral factor than a boost) and Republicans are at war with the party (establishment support was a negative factor). You cannot have congressional approval ratings akin to the approval polling for chlamydia without those views casting shade on both parties' establishments.

This is a change election. The Democratic and Republican parties will not be the same a year from now regardless of who wins. Either Nate doesn't get this or he does, but cannot publicly acknowledge it.

[DinahMoeHum]

16. He who lives by the crystal ball ends up eating broken glass.

Just sayin'